How to protect HHS, FDA, NIH, and other health agencies from political interference

Congress must step up

Then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn looked on as President Donald Trump announced in August 2020 that the Food and Drug Administration would issue an emergency authorization for blood plasma as a coronavirus treatment.Pete Marovich/Getty Images

By Anushka Bhaskar, Aaron S. Kesselheim, and Daniel Carpenter

Jan. 31, 2025

Bhaskar is a research assistant at the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law at Harvard Medical School. Kesselheim is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law. Carpenter is Allie S. Freed professor of government and chair of the Harvard University Department of Government.

In the fall of 2020, even as scientists raced to develop Covid-19 vaccines, Americans’ trust in these lifesaving shots plummeted. Many became more skeptical because of the behavior of U.S. leaders. Our recent study, published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, tracks how the Trump administration applied public pressure on the FDA during the 2020 election season, sparking a crisis of vaccine confidence.

On Aug. 23, 2020, for example, then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn stood beside President Trump to announce the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma for Covid-19 treatment — and wildly overstated the efficacy of the intervention. That marked the first time in FDA history that a president personally participated in announcing a treatment authorization.

Trump followed this event by accusing the FDA on two different occasions of deliberately delaying vaccine approvals until after the election and criticizing the agency’s safety guidelines as a “political move.”

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